At first glance, Erik Lieshout, Michel Houellebecq and Iggy Pop don’t have a whole lot in common. Lieshout is a journalist and filmmaker; Houellebecq is the vicious novelist behind the startling best-seller Atomised; and Iggy Pop is the great punk stooge, the kind of abrasive talent who really needs no introduction.
So what, if anything, drew the three together? The answer is To Stay Alive – A Method, a by turns hilarious and haunting documentary helmed by Lieshout and starring Pop and Houellebecq, based on an essay written by the latter. The film takes an all-encompassing look at the intersection of art and survival, and features both fictionalised material and conversations between its two stars as they dissect their own success, and the cultural (and literal) starvation they had to endure to get where they are.
“Michel Houellebecq was raised by his grandparents,” Lieshout explains of his collaborator. “Not because his mother and father were dead, but because they thought they had more important things to do than to raise him. So Michel was not a very happy child … When he was 16 years old, he went to a record shop and bought the first album by The Stooges. It was just by accident – he liked the cover or something. He listened to it in the store, and by the end of the very first song ‘1969’ a deep emotion overcame him.
“Michel said to me recently, ‘At that very moment I realised I was no longer alone in this world.’” And that love goes both ways, Lieshout explains. “I know Iggy has read everything from Michel that is available in English, and I know Michel has written a novel while playing a 12-minute version of Iggy’s song ‘Open Up And Bleed’ on his computer on permanent repeat.”
Indeed, that connection between Houellebecq and Pop defines the film. To Stay Alive hinges on their relationship – on the odd, beautiful ways their works intersect. Happily, they proved to be as helpful collaborators as they are talented artists, and Lieshout was assisted to no end by their generous creative attitudes.
“You know, when you’re in the film business, there is always a lot of hassle … but these two guys, Houellebecq and Pop, were loyal. I could count on them. Iggy was even prepared after the shoot to do some extra voiceovers in a BBC radio studio.”
As a result of that loyalty, the film proved one of the most fruitful creative experiences of Lieshout’s career. “Every unexpected turn seemed to make the film better. And improbable shooting challenges, like filming on a Parisian boulevard that was supposed to be empty, without any permission, went well. All kinds of quotes or images seemed to add up … I once read that everybody on the shoot of Taxi Driver had the same kind of feeling. A crew member of that film said, ‘We did it, and we knew we would never do it again.’”
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The film does have a kind of miraculous feel to it – a sort of temporary wonder enhanced by even its smallest details. “When we shot the last scene, I was actually shocked to see that one of Iggy’s legs was way shorter than the other,” Lieshout says. “‘It’s how I was built,’ he said. Simple as that. And then we did the shot, a long walk on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, with Iggy walking in the middle of the street towards the sunrise, limping, and all the other poets and artists behind him and next to him. It was so impressive to see him limping the way for all these living suicidals. It really got me.”
To Stay Alive – A Method is showing at Dendy Opera Quays on Friday June 9 and Dendy Newtown on Monday June 12 as part of Sydney Film Festival 2017.
